Loveland engineering students go 3-D

Mountain View High School junior Brennan King likes being able to design and "print out" his ideas in three dimensions.

What he uses isn't an ordinary printer but the Lulzbot 3-D printer donated to his school's engineering program by Jeff Moe, owner of Aleph Objects in Loveland.

"It's really cool to draw something up ... you can print it out and it's right there," Brennan said.

The Lulzbot printer, retailing for $1,725, builds three-dimensional objects in layers using any of a variety of plastics, wood or other materials. The printer makes each layer according to drawings created in computer-aided design, or CAD, software.

Brennan's father, Jerry King, approached Moe in late January asking him to donate a printer to replace a 6-year-old 3-D printer in ill repair and costly to fix.

The school's printer was proprietary, while the Lulzbot 3-D printer is open hardware, with the drawings, schematics and bill of materials all available online, Moe said. The 3-D printers have been available for more than a decade but became more affordable in the past two to three years, he said.

"Our system is completely open," Moe said. "One of the strongest points for students is they can learn anything about the unit itself."

Moe donated the printer and a roll of plastic to the engineering program, which also has access to a laser engraver, structure testing devices and other tools.

Brennan, 17, designed a plastic enclosure for the printer and used it to create the mounting brackets to hold the enclosure together. He took on the project during his independent study class, taking three weeks to finish it.

"It's just another tool we have available," Brennan said. "It gives us another layer of complexity that adds to what we can build."

Tom Frayer, pre-engineering teacher, uses the printer in the four classes offered through the Project Lead the Way program, including introduction to engineering and design, principles of engineering, aerospace engineering, and engineering design and development.

"You can build anything you want. It's cutting-edge technology," Frayer said. "We have a cutting-edge program here at Mountain View."

The printer can be used to make parts, to create prototypes and to do hands-on testing, designing and building.

"You can think of something and you have the ability to print it out rather than sculpt it by hand," said Tyler King, Brennan's brother and a ninth-grader at the school.

The printer works by feeding plastic or another material for the desired part through a nozzle, where it is melted at 230 degrees Celsius, Moe said.

The nozzle moves in an X and Y plane, side to side and front to back, to lay down plastic, and then it moves up approximately 0.02 millimeters in the Z plane to start the next layer, Moe said.

"It winds up building up parts from the bottom up until the print is done," Moe said.

Engineers, inventors and others use the printer to test their ideas and for low-volume production, Moe said.

"It's cool to watch how it builds the material up," said Brandon Sheffler, a 10th grader at the school. "It's fun to play with. You can build anything."